Last year I fell out of love with celery. I’m not really sure why. I think I juiced a bunch of celery and it made my tongue numb and I wondered why I would want to drink something that made my tongue numb. Maybe I just had celery sitting in my fridge and stared at it for a few months straight until I finally took it out and swore I wouldn’t waste celery again so I didn’t buy any? That’s probably what happened. Yeah. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.

In our house we get a weekly vegetable/fruit delivery from a local service called Full Circle. I always love the variety of fruits & vegetables that get delivered because it serves as a good reminder of what’s currently in season. In last week’s box, not only did I get persimmons, carrots & apples, I got a huge bunch of celery. CELERY. So what to do with it? Make a salad!

Melissa Clark is my favorite salad DJ. I can imagine that she would be the best person to stand next to at a salad bar. She introduced to me to this Kale Pecorino number that I make all the time. So, this here salad? This was the salad that made me like celery again. I’m back in the celery game! It reminded me a lot of the Addictive Brussels Sprouts Salad I make/love. The celery isn’t as pungent as I thought it would be. The Parmesan adds a nice bite and oh man HOLY CRUNCH with both the walnuts and celery. When you’re sick of eating turkey & leftovers next week, you should make this.

Preheat oven to 350F. Spread walnuts in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Toast, tossing once halfway through, until the nuts are golden, 7-10 minutes. Cool and coarsely chop.

In a small bowl, whisk together the vinegar, salt and pepper; whisk in the oil. Combine the walnuts, celery and leaves, and cheese in a large salad bowl. Add the vinaigrette and toss until gently combined.

36 Comments

I love celery salads! Glad to hear you’re back on the bandwagon. And I am especially loving them lately because I am saving and drying all the leaves to make this homemade flaky celery salt for holiday gifts: http://emmycooks.com/2012/10/11/homemade-celery-salt/ Double win!

I’ve never seen a salad with enough celery to grant “celery” a place in the title of the recipe. It sounds really interesting! The best thing about salads are the crisp, cold, crunchy (okay enough “c” adjectives…) and fresh elements they provide. I can’t think of anything that has that more than celery, so I’m sure it’s super satisfying to eat.

I make a celery salad with celery, farmers cheese, red onion with a vinaigrette on top! It’s my hubby’s favorite salad! The original recipe called for Feta cheese, but we like the more mild Farmer’s cheese taste. YUM!

Celery is the one thing I really don’t like, unless it’s coated in ranch dip or peanut butter – underlying message: it can’t taste like celery. But this recipe and listening to Deb Perelman talk at her book signing in DC on Monday night about the food she hates (beets) but how she kept trying until she found a way to like them (recipe in the book) are about to convince me to try again.
PS – While Deb was signing my cookbook I told her she was one of my 3 food blog loves and when she asked me which other blogs, I mentioned you and Joy, to which she started telling me how you guys stopped by to visit her home & how great you are. Thanks to all three of you for providing such happy places on the internet & inspiring us all with your recipes! You ladies all rock!

I totally have this salad on my must-make list for winter. That Melissa Clark never lets me down! I don’t think her cookbooks get enough attention from food bloggers, which I suspect is because they don’t have a lot of photos. I also think celery is totally underrated (blame the veggie trays).

You know what? I’ve never thought of celery salad before. I don’t know why! It’s the perfect salad star: crunchy, slightly salty, juicy. I imagine chopped apples would go well with this too, seeing it’s apple season. Oh, and raisins! I’m going to have this for lunch very soon

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[...] I organized a kind of impromptu dinner party/play date Friday night so I used Dylan’s nap time to prep the food for dinner. I like the food that Tracy from the blog Shutterbean makes (I also love her podcast which I wrote about here and here), so I went to her site for recipe ideas and decided to try her celery salad. [...]